# Junie CLI vs mini-swe-agent

> mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) to Junie CLI's 53.2 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against Junie CLI's 53.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Junie CLI leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- Junie CLI: grade D, 53.2/100, rank #804 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/junie.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/junie.json
- mini-swe-agent: grade C, 56.7/100, rank #698 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mini-swe-agent.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Junie CLI (D)

Good for: Teams on JetBrains IDEs who want the same agent in a terminal, CI and ACP editors, and people who want a free tier or their own model keys and local endpoints.

Ahead on:
- Maintenance & community, 72 against 49
- Transparency & trust, 78 against 51

Watch for: One-shot, piped, ACP and Gateway runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers, hooks, agents and skills without a prompt

### mini-swe-agent (C)

Good for: Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 70 against 45
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 55
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 42

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: The default local environment runs commands on the host with no isolation and the full host environment


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Junie CLI | mini-swe-agent | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 45 | 70 | mini-swe-agent +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 62 | 58 | Junie CLI +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 69 | mini-swe-agent +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 56 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 42 | 60 | mini-swe-agent +18 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 49 | Junie CLI +23 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 51 | Junie CLI +27 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **53.2 · D** | **56.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Junie CLI | mini-swe-agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | JetBrains | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, JetBrains s.r.o., all rights reserved, under the JetBrains AI Terms of Service. The GitHub repository holds the README, release binaries and the issue tracker, not source | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-06-12 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 487 stars, 3.2k npm/wk | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | 3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Junie CLI.** Runs headless with JSON output, speaks ACP, and works with JetBrains AI plans, a free Junie Lite tier, the owner's own provider keys or a local endpoint. Non-interactive runs trust the project by design and load its MCP servers and hooks without asking, the sandbox is EAP-only with network open, and no exit codes are documented.

**mini-swe-agent.** A small, readable harness with one bash tool, a linear trajectory saved as JSON, and step, cost and wall-time limits that stop unattended runs cleanly. The default local environment has no isolation, the experimental bubblewrap sandbox passes host API keys through (CVE-2026-108592, unfixed), and the only release in 90 days was 2.4.6 on 23 July 2026.

## Before you call either

### Junie CLI

1. Run headless only in repositories you trust. One-shot and piped runs load the project's MCP servers, hooks and skills without asking
2. Set `JUNIE_API_KEY` (from junie.jetbrains.com/cli) or a provider key such as `JUNIE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` in CI. The default sign-in opens a browser
3. Add `--output-format json` or `--json-output-file` to parse results. Check the output, since exit codes aren't documented
4. Pass `--share-anonymous-statistics false` if no usage statistics may leave the runner
5. Pin a build with `--use-version` and `--skip-update-check`. The CLI updates itself on start by default

### mini-swe-agent

1. Run with `-y --exit-immediately` for unattended use. Without `--exit-immediately` it waits for input when the agent finishes
2. Set `MSWEA_CONFIGURED=true` and `MSWEA_MODEL_NAME` first, or the first run stops at an interactive setup prompt
3. Read `info.exit_status` in the `-o` trajectory file. A run that hits its limits still exits normally
4. For untrusted repositories use `-c mini.yaml -c environment.environment_class=docker -c environment.image=<image>`. The local and bubblewrap environments both expose host variables
5. Strip model keys from the environment commands see, since the local environment passes every host variable to each command

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Junie CLI or mini-swe-agent?

mini-swe-agent scores 56.7 (C) on agent readiness against Junie CLI's 53.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Junie CLI leads on maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

### Are Junie CLI and mini-swe-agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Junie CLI. mini-swe-agent is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/junie-vs-mini-swe-agent.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/junie-vs-mini-swe-agent.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "junie", "b": "mini-swe-agent"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare junie mini-swe-agent`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/junie.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mini-swe-agent.json

## Other comparisons with Junie CLI or mini-swe-agent

- [Agent Zero vs Junie CLI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-junie.md)
- [Agent Zero vs mini-swe-agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-zero-vs-mini-swe-agent.md)
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